Small businesses turned to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) for commercial financing in record numbers during fiscal year 2006, setting new single-year records for both the number of loans and the dollars loaned, according to SBA Administrator Steven C.

The government will not have any accounting basis for enforcement actions against companies for “spring-loading” or “bullet-dodging” stock option grants, according to Scott Taub, deputy chief accountant for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC ). Taub spoke at a Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) advisory council meeting in New York on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Accounting students, struggling with a problem in the middle of the night, can now get live help from one of the new online tutoring companies.Based in India and the U.S., these firms employ tutors from around the globe, using a combination of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging (IM) and a virtual white board to which the student and the tutor both have access, Reuters reports. Smarthinking.com provides tutoring through individual accounts, college and institutional accounts and its partnership with the publishing company, Houghton Mifflin, Co.

Toshiba Corp. announced on Friday that it would recall 830,000 batteries manufactured by Sony in response to a statement by Sony that it would initiate a global recall of all its battery packs, PC Magazine reports. This followed Thursday’s announcement by IBM and Lenovo Group that they will recall 526,000 rechargeable lithium-ion Sony batteries purchased with ThinkPad computers.

State and local governments, long generous to employees with promises of health care in retirement, often in exchange for pay increases, are struggling to estimate these costs for financial statement purposes, according to new rules issued by the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB).

The second annual Employment Dynamics and Growth Expectation (EDGE) Report released late last month by Robert Half International (RHI) and Careerbuilder.com shows hiring managers and employees with very different perceptions of the job market. Recruiting is more challenging today than one year ago, hiring managers say, with 81 percent reporting difficulty in finding qualified candidates, up from 55 percent last year. Employees, however, are less likely to negotiate higher salaries today. Only 12 percent of employees plan to seek higher salaries in 2006, down from 20 percent in 2005.

Major changes in pension plan rules are fueling a trend toward outsourcing plan management, with 81 percent of executives responding to a Quick Poll reporting they will consider it. The results of the poll, released on Monday, also indicate that 42 percent of participating U.S. and Canadian plan sponsors remain committed to their defined benefit plans. 

Today, many people do business outside of their own country, either in person or by some form of communication, and this can prove to be a dicey proposition. Even in the United States there are differences in customs between states and regions.

Privately owned companies, although not bound by the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), are feeling the effects of the law in specific areas of their businesses, as well as the impact of widespread public commitment to stronger internal controls that the law has helped to create.